BMW Owners News
ContributorsMOA MediaMOA PodcastsThe Ride Inside

Foolishness SQUARED!

So-called “common sense” is, of course, not common. Foolishness, on the other hand, is always, well, close at hand. What follows is an example from our beloved avocation, but we certainly have no monopoly. Lest anyone think I’m handing down a critique from some position of superiority, I admit to understanding this nonsense firsthand as one of its long-term practitioners. Yet even with full awareness of the multiple downsides involved, I still fall prey to a particular self-defeating mindset; call this “foolishness squared.”

The one and only Kenny Roberts, shown in this MotoGP photograph from 1980.

Racing legend Kenny Roberts famously said regarding his (then) revolutionary approach to cornering, “You have to go slow to go fast.” He was referring to braking hard early, turning abruptly at a relatively low speed, then accelerating out of the curve sooner than his competitors, an advantage he’d carry all the way down the next straight. Hold that thought.

Another old adage is, “Going fast on a slow bike is more fun than going slow on a fast bike.” Who hasn’t giggled in their helmet while wringing the neck of a small-bore, flimsily suspended, simple/cheap-to-repair motorcycle? Conversely, who hasn’t been terrified, or at least deeply humbled, by the shockingly abrupt responsiveness of a lavishly expensive ultra-high-performance machine? In the former situation, we feel a gleeful sense of power and mastery, not because of the bike’s strength, but because we’re able to push it to its limits without hesitation. In the latter situation, we’re cowed by the huge gulf between the motorcycle’s capabilities and our own; the limits are ours, not the machine’s, and it threatens to rocket us past those thresholds before we know it, so we tiptoe along gingerly. Contrary to uninformed assumptions, exotic pedigrees don’t make mundane tasks easier to perform.


Listen to this column as Episode 32 of The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes. Submit your questions to Mark for the podcast by emailing [email protected]. This episode will be available starting 5 August 2023.


Motorcycles tempt us to augment our sense of competence by annexing theirs. I can incorporate my bike’s strengths into my own identity and feel as though I possess them. This also works the other way around: I can experience shame about my motorcycle’s weaknesses, as though they reflect badly on me. Guess who’s most likely to reach for a sense of mastery they can buy, rather than one they’d have to earn—the impatient, incompetent, and/or ignorant neophyte. There’s a perverse tendency of weaker riders to own stronger motorcycles to compensate for their own inadequacy. You can insert a joke here about phallic insecurity, and this dynamic probably is more prevalent among male riders than females, but the same outcome occurs because of naivete, too.

The consequent rider/bike pairings create a bind. If I lack skill and I’m on a scary motorcycle, my fear will prevent me from learning to ride better. I will be too anxious about the costs—to my body, my wallet, or my image—to risk falling, yet falling is a normal, inevitable part of the learning process, especially early in the learning curve. Mistakes will—and must—be made on the way to legitimate mastery, and if the stakes are too high, progress won’t occur because mistakes are unaffordable. The best I can hope for is blind idealization from those who’ll see my glorious motorcycle and assume my capabilities are commensurate with those of my bike; I just need to ensure they never see me actually ride. People can maintain this type of fraudulence in many areas of their lives, hoping to evade tests that would expose the discrepancies between branding and reality. Some even buy into their own PR, equating the illusion they’ve created with who they are and losing track of what’s true.

My first, and in many ways my very best, track day on a Honda Hawk GT at Talladega Gran Prix Raceway (a tiny 10-turn, 1.3-mile track in Munford, Ala.). With the least horsepower of any motorcycle I ever rode on a racetrack, I had the rubber balling up and rubbing off the tread shoulder—a feat I never repeated.

Ideally, much moto-learning gets done with low stakes, on a small dirt bike moving slowly over soft earth with adequate safety gear, good coaching, and a balance of playfulness and sober concentration. There must be enough tension to fuel effort and reasonable caution, but not so much anxiety that attention gets splintered by distractions or funneled down to a single point of fear. I realize not everyone starts out this way, and I respect folks who begin riding as an adult on a grownup street bike. I also wonder what learning trajectory is possible for someone whose first motorcycle is a full-sized, modern engineering marvel. Can they risk falling? Can they “sneak up” on braking and cornering skills without crossing invisible lines, losing control, and scaring themselves to death? Without the experience of reaching/exceeding limits, how will they know when such limits are approaching? Excellent instruction and extensive practice in controlled environments might allow much learning to take place sans catastrophe, but I doubt this is what most late bloomers actually get, or even realize is possible and necessary. While perhaps not driven by a need for phallic compensation, they still ride bikes that far exceed their skill levels. Such riders may remain uneasy forever, or be blissfully—and dangerously—ignorant of this disparity (a state that’s sure to be temporary).

Now, my confession.

1969 Honda Trail 70, courtesy of the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa; it is unfortunately closing in 2023 due to high costs and low levels of visitor support.

I began riding in early adolescence on a Honda Trail 70. Upon delivery, the van driver hastily pointed out all the controls and left. On my maiden voyage, I clumsily popped the clutch, stood the little machine on its rear tire, and ran behind it into the yard, narrowly missing my wide-eyed father. Other mishaps followed, too numerous to recall. I learned what I could in the school of (literally) hard knocks but managed to avoid serious injury and thought this meant I knew what I was doing. I bought a half-dozen more motorcycles, ever-larger and increasingly street-oriented, before graduating from college and purchasing my first sport bike: Kawasaki’s original 900 Ninja. I chose the Ninja after poring over magazine articles on a quest to find the most impressive, most powerful, best handling machine available. I—like too many other motorcyclists—thought performance resided in the machine when it’s really a function of rider skill. I’ve since met many good riders who’d have lapped me and that Ninja on a Briggs & Stratton minibike at a track day.

I’d never received any rider training (I didn’t even know there was such a thing) and lived in central Florida at the time, where there were neither hills nor curves. I was eyeball-deep in a world of fantasy and ignorance, but I certainly found the Ninja’s acceleration on empty rural roads exhilarating (anyone can twist a throttle and go fast in a straight line). I basked in the glow of its theoretical sporting prowess and couldn’t imagine going back to something tamer.

When I moved to the foothills of Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains, where there were neither flat roads nor straight ones, I hadn’t the slightest idea how to ride on sinewy mountain tarmac, much less exploit the capabilities of what was at that time considered a fire-breathing beast of a motorcycle. I just loved the way the Ninja looked, its technology, and knowing it was superlative hardware. I immediately traded up to its next two successors, the Ninja 1000R and ZX-10 for those same reasons. I got used to riding in the mountains alone, since I knew no other motorcyclists during this era. I enjoyed the scenery, but still had no clue about proper technique or how clueless I really was. It was many years later, when I finally joined a group of accomplished riders, that it dawned on me I was grossly deficient, despite having owned several more cutting-edge, big-bore sport bikes along the way. These companions tutored me on cornering, took me to my first track day, and started me down the road to actually learning how to ride—when I’d already been a motorcycle owner for 20 years.

I eventually realized my liter-bikes were holding me back instead of bolstering my proficiency; managing them was simply too far beyond my abilities. I spent time on borrowed bikes, a Honda 650 Hawk GT and Ducati 750SS, both of which were primitive tools compared to what I’d owned, yet I was instantly faster and had more fun on them. I swallowed my pride and dropped down to a Honda CBR600F4, a machine that even today would exceed my personal performance envelope, but at least it reduced the intimidation factor enough for me to learn more easily. I began taking formal rider education, including the MSF’s basic and advanced courses, a variety of track-based schools, and the on-road training of Larry Grodsky’s Stayin’ Safe tour. I read skill-related books like Keith Code’s A Twist of the Wrist and many others, and watched what videos (on VHS back then) I could find. These were all revelations to me, despite my many years of “experience.”

At the much faster Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on a Kawasaki ZX-9R. With more than twice the little Hawk’s thrust and much more heft, my tires were still perfectly fine at the end of day two. Something’s definitely wrong here.

It turns out King Kenny’s quote applies to more than just racetrack cornering strategy. In order to go fast on a big bike, it’s probably necessary to first go slow on a small bike. I learned to drag my knee at Willow Springs Raceway, not on the hardcore superbike I’d ridden timidly around the track, but on a tiny pit bike in the paddock. I’m still not “fast” on any bike, but I’m much more competent than I was on that first Ninja. Lots of dirt riding alongside my street journey helped, too, allowing me to fall countless times without prohibitively awful consequences. My initial dirt bike experiences in flat, sandy Florida did nothing to prepare me for the steep, rocky, muddy, root-infested, tortuously tight trails I encountered in the Appalachian mountains; I had to start over from scratch.

In my off-roading, too, I tended to buy apex predator machinery that actually made learning harder instead of easier. Again, I had to get this lesson hammered into my head repeatedly: proficiency isn’t in the motorcycle, it’s in the motorcyclist! I’d get smoked by halfway decent riders on vastly “inferior” bikes while struggling with the frightening ferocity of my own. The dirt bike I was actually fastest on and enjoyed the most had the least horsepower and simplest suspension; too bad it was second in a long series. As was true on the street, I kept going slower and slower on faster and faster motorcycles. That’s serious foolishness. I did develop some skills, but I made this process far more difficult and inefficient with my bike choices. I’d have done worlds better to put all that bike purchase money toward more riding classes.

For tech geeks like me, it’s always tempting to chase down the latest, greatest motorcycles and forget what truly makes riding fun—and makes a rider both fast and safe. Authentic skill development, through solid instruction and lots of practice, is what really counts. Since my (semi-) enlightenment, I’ve often kept a smaller bike handy to allow me to work on technique more readily than I can on the brawny top-tier machines I still find irresistible. During the first half of my five-decade tenure as a motorcyclist, I was simply ignorant about all this. The second half, however, has been a mixture of knowing better and foolishly making some choices as though I didn’t. Long ago I learned I can’t fool a good motorcyclist solely by what bike I own, but it’s harder to break the habit of fooling myself.


Mark Barnes is a clinical psychologist and motojournalist. To read more of his writings, check out his book Why We Ride: A Psychologist Explains the Motorcyclist’s Mind and the Love Affair Between Rider, Bike and Road, currently available in paperback through Amazon and other retailers.